baron

Latin, baro.

Most references to the king's barons in Domesday Book occur in a judicial context, either in relation to the Domesday Inquestor
to other judicial matters. Occasionally the term is used in the more
general sense of the king's greater landowners. Curiously, all of these
in Great Domesday occur in entriesfor boroughs(Bath,
Wareham, Warwick). The word is used once in this sense in Little
Domesday, but with reference to the greater Anglo-Saxon lords.

The later characteristics of baronial rank and tenure are not apparent
in Domesday Book or in other contemporary sources. It is impossible to
determine who might have been regarded as of baronial status in 1086, or
if indeed that concept were yet current. Historians nevertheless
sometimes use the term baron to refer to those tenants-in-chiefallocated their own individual fiefs in Domesday Book (as opposed to the sergeantsgrouped
in collective fiefs). Domesday, however, is not consistent in
separating the two groups from each other, so this is at best a crude
distinction. As with much of the feudalterminology in Domesday Book, the classic feudal meanings of these terms had yet to evolve.

For further information, see Sidney Painter, Studies in the history of the English feudal barony (1943); F.M. Stenton, The first century of English feudalism (second edition, 1961); English baronies: a study of their origin and descent, 1086-1327, edited by I.J. Sanders (1960); Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and vassals: the medieval evidence reinterpreted (1994); and Judith A. Green, The aristocracy of Norman England (1997).